


Take It All Back

by LinksLipsSinkShips



Series: Folk, Hop, n Rhink [5]
Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Multiverse Theory, Tropetastic Tuesday, married au, tropetastic tuesday 17
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-21 20:25:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11364981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LinksLipsSinkShips/pseuds/LinksLipsSinkShips
Summary: Rhett and Link are happy together, madly in love, but Rhett still can't help but ask... what if?





	Take It All Back

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the Judah and the Lion Song "Take It All Back 2.0"
> 
> This is my submission for Tropetastic Tuesday 17: "What If?" Unfortunately, it's WAY over the word count, but after several attempts, I just couldn't get this concept into under 500 words. Oops.

“Gosh dang it!” Link startled, spilling a little bit of coffee on the counter, as Rhett wrapped his arm around Link’s stomach, reaching around him with the other arm to grab his cup of tea that had been steeping. “You scared me to death, bo.” Link let out a little chuckle as he reached for a dish towel to wipe the coffee spill up, and Rhett took the opportunity to press a little kiss against his partner’s neck before releasing the arm he had snaked around Link’s slender waist.

Rhett walked around the counter to sit on the barstool at the island, now face-to-face with those gorgeous blue eyes that he could get lost in. “Busy day ahead, baby?” Link looked over his glasses at Rhett, arching an eyebrow. Rhett sipped his tea, checking his smartphone for the email his boss had sent out yesterday. “Yeah, looks like I’ll be working late tonight.”

“Okay,” Link sighed softly as he joined Rhett at the kitchen island, coffee in one hand and a bowl of Mini-Wheats in the other. “I’ll pick up Chinese on the way home, okay? Unless you want cereal for dinner…” Rhett knew that leaving Link unattended in their apartment kitchen was a good way to come back to an apartment fire, so they agreed on takeout. Rhett helped straighten Link’s tie, then kissed him deeply. “I’ll see you after work. I love you.”

He wouldn’t necessarily say his life was perfect. He was logging way too many hours at work, an engineering job that he didn’t hate, but that he didn’t find particularly fulfilling, either. Link was an engineer, also, but they didn’t work at the same firm. Rhett had wished they were able to secure work at the same place, but they weren’t even the same kind of engineers, and it was probably best they didn’t work together anyway. Rhett was distracted from work by thoughts of Link as it was, and couldn’t imagine how much worse it would be if Link were within reach all day. While most people would blame Rhett’s inability to focus on anything but Link on the fact that they were only a year into their marriage, they’d been a couple for over a decade and known each other their whole lives. This wasn’t just a newlywed period, but instead Rhett’s undying love for Link clouding his brain.

But Rhett knew, deep inside, that there might be some universe in which they weren’t together. He believed strongly in the multiverse theory, and while Link laughed it off most times, Rhett knew Link thought it might be true, as well. If the multiverse theory was true, there was probably a universe in which he and Link never met, but Rhett refused to think about that. There was also probably a universe where they never admitted how they felt for one another way back in college, a universe where they probably just stuffed down those feelings and did the right thing. Maybe in that universe, they’d have wives with big ol’ diamond rings and fancy cars and houses. Maybe they’d live somewhere exotic like California. Maybe they’d be doing something arguably more fun than working engineering jobs and picking up Chinese food because Rhett would be stuck working late… again.

Rhett wondered what that life might be like. Would it have been worth it? Would he and Link have at least stayed in each others’ lives? Would they be making their dreams come true together? Rhett couldn’t imagine a universe where he and Link weren’t together in some capacity. The thought of another universe, one where they weren’t together, nagged at Rhett throughout his work day… he just couldn’t shake it.

“Mmm, that smells good. Did you get the egg rolls I like?” Rhett was famished, his body and mind drained, not from work, but from worrying about the multiverse.

“You look tired, baby.” Link passed Rhett an egg roll as he studied the lines on his husband’s face, reaching out to touch his cheek.

“Link, do you ever think about what it would be like if you and I hadn’t fallen in love, or if we had, but hadn’t told each other?”

“Thinking about the multiverse again?” Link was used to Rhett coming home with various ideas of universes where they worked at different places or had gone to film school instead of engineering school or where Rhett had joined the NBA. Each came with its own beauties and joys, but each came with its own frustrations and sadness, too. Rhett considered the multiverses as though they were real, existing just out of reach of this reality, and he tended to let himself get down about multiverses where he and Link weren’t together  _ enough _ for his liking.

“I just… what if we were doing something way better, better than engineering, living someplace amazing, but what if we had given all of this up to have it? Would it be worth it to you?” Rhett put the words out into the open, but he feared that Link’s answer might be yes. While he had no doubts that Link was in love with him, happy to be married to him, it could have so easily gone another way. People didn’t come out in North Carolina, not in their small, conservative town, not easily. Rhett’s family had shut him out when he came out, when he’d told them that he and Link were no longer just friends, but instead hoped to marry each other someday, and Link’s mother held him at a cautious distance for a very long time before she finally accepted both boys with loving arms. It took time, though, and sometimes Rhett wondered if Link hadn’t wished they’d gone a different way.

“Rhett, I would love to be doing something other than engineering. I’d love it if we could have pursued our film school dreams. But I cannot, in any universe, imagine a time or place where we aren’t together, side-by-side, every single day. And if I did live in that universe? I’d probably just spend all my time thinking about how I’d take it all back if I could just have you.”

The worry in Rhett’s face was replaced with those loving eyes, the ones that Link could feel go straight through him, overflowing his heart with joy. “Yeah, Link. I’d take it all back to have you, too.”

Rhett stirred in his sleep, opening his eyes and turning towards the brunette in his bed. It took him a few blinks, a few seconds to shake off the dream he’d awoken from, before he realized it was his wife, not Link, in bed beside him. He smiled. He wasn’t sure that he’d take  _ this  _ back. He loved his wife, his kids, and he was so happy to get to work with Link every single day. He was truly a lucky man. But it made him smile, made his heart swell just a little bit, to know that somewhere out there, there was probably a universe where he and Link were together.


End file.
